CHARLESTON — Even as active COVID-19 cases and hospitalization numbers decline, West Virginia recorded 31 deaths over the weekend, pushing the total fatalities attributed to the virus since the spring of 2020 over 6,000.

“We have lost 6,023 great West Virginians,” Gov. Jim Justice said during Monday’s online COVID-19 briefing. “It rips my heart out in so many ways.”

Justice and Dr. Clay Marsh, the state’s coronavirus czar and vice president/executive dean for Health Sciences at West Virginia University, continued to urge people to take advantage of free COVID-19 vaccinations.

“Many of these deaths could have been prevented by people choosing to be fully vaccinated and boosted,” Marsh said.

Marsh noted the average daily death rate across the country is declining and he anticipates West Virginia’s following suit. The surge caused by the more-contagious omicron variant appears to be waning, he said, but pointed to the virus’ adaptability over the last two-plus years.

“COVID-19 has proven to be a very capable virus to continue to navigate any types of treatment or any reduced amount of spread,” Marsh said. “So before we sort of go from pandemic to epidemic to maybe to more endemic, we will need to very closely follow what the virus does.”

Wyoming is the only one of West Virginia’s 55 counties that was red on Monday’s County Alert System Map. Red is the highest of five categories illustrating the rate of spread of the virus, based on the lower of new cases in a designated period of time or percentage of positive tests.

The federal Food and Drug Administration recently granted emergency use authorization to a new monoclonal anitbody treatment, bebtelovimab. James Hoyer, the head of the state’s joint interagency task force, said officials do not yet know how much of it West Virginia will receive.

Marsh said the treatment is to be held in reserve unless other, preferred treatments are unavailable. While the treatment has demonstrated “very good binding characteristics in the omicron variant,” it was initially tested during the delta surge and has not undergone clinical trials specifically for omicron, he said.

Earlier this year, the FDA revoked emergency authorization for two other monoclonal antibody treatments because they were not as effective against the variant. And Marsh noted an antibody drug made by GlaxoSmithKline that is effective is in relatively short supply.

Justice again praised the efforts of the West Virginia Army National Guard, noting there are 326 members providing support at 36 health care facilities, both hospitals and long-term care establishments, around the state.

“We will continue with the Guard in that mission for the foreseeable future,” Hoyer said.

He later added that COVID hospitalizations and staffing issues would be discussed with hospital leaders, possibly this week, before decisions are made on any changes to the Guard deployment.